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Press Release

Berger Entrepreneurship MBAs claim the Grand Prize

April 15, 2002

Karl Eller Center Berger Entrepreneurship Program MBA's Mevlut Gurun, Layne Stolworthy, and Curtis Whetten earned the Grand Prize title at Rice University's 2002 Southwest Business Plan Competition with their business plan Super Servicio.  The competition was held April 11-13 and was hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jones Graduate School of Management.

The Southwest Business Plans Competition is one of the premier business plans competitions in the US and is one of only a handful of qualifying competitions in the country for the international Moot Corp finals.  As winners of the SWBCP, Super Servicio will advance to Moot Corp at UT Austin where they will compete for $100,000 seed funding. 

Capitalizing on NAFTA generating Mexican and American truck transport traffic throughout Mexico, Super Servicio will fill a new need for a ìone-stopî truck stop for truck drivers in Mexico. Super ServicioTM  is actively seeking $4.5 million of stage one capital to build an initial truck stop in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.

Through the semi finals and finals, Super Servicio won the favor of the combined 70 plus-member judging panels to beat out teams competing from eighteen universities including Stanford, Northwestern, Purdue, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Rice, Georgia Tech, and Georgia.  The team will share the $15,000 first prize.  The finalists were:

1. U of Arizona #1      
2. Georgia Tech #2      
3. U of Georgia #3      
4. UT Texas      
5. U of Arkansas      
6. U of Michigan

The elite option for entrepreneurship education

A pioneer in entrepreneurship education, the Karl Eller Center's Berger Entrepreneurship Program strives to provide the highest caliber education opportunity to both graduate and undergraduate students.  The program has been top ranked nationally since its inception in 1984.  The UA based program has been named a model program at both the graduate and undergraduate levels by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) and is one of only three of only three programs in the country to hold both designations.

The Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona is internationally recognized for pioneering research, innovative curriculum, distinguished faculty, excellence in management information systems, entrepreneurship, and social responsibility. U.S. News & World Report ranks the Eller undergraduate program #14 among public business schools and three of its programs are among the top 20 — Entrepreneurship, MIS, and Management. U.S. News & World Report ranks the Eller MBA Full-Time program #44 in the U.S. and #21 among public business schools. The College leads the nation’s business schools in generating grant funds for research. In addition to a Full-Time MBA program, the Eller College offers an Evening MBA program and the Eller Executive MBA. The Eller College of Management supports approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 700 graduate students on the UA campus in beautiful Tucson, Arizona.

Press Contact:
Liz Warren-Pederson, Eller College of Management
520.626.9547, news@eller.arizona.edu

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